Next week, the musical world will experience a huge event: eight years after their last album, master of dance music Daft Punk will drop their much-hyped album, Random Access Memories. Music website Pitchfork has honored that with an amazing, immersive feature that evokes the immersive nature of the buzzy New York Times piece, “Snowfall.”

Offering a rare glimpse into the largely private world of Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, and it achieves it best with strong visual elements that only new media can provide. Taking advantage of HTML5 and GIFs, the layout of the piece flows smartly and shows a lot more editorial flair than the standard feature.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Verscholen achter de bewoners waarmee het Antwerpse stadsbestuur een dading afsloot om de Sinksenfoor alsnog op de Zuiderdokken te kunnen organiseren, zitten enkele machtige Nederlandse bouwpromotoren. Heeft het stadsbestuur, naast de terugbetaling van 45.000 euro gerechtskosten, nog andere toezeggingen gedaan aan de 'bewoners' of de bouwpromotoren? Bestaat er een nog onbekend luik van het omstreden compromis?

Achttien Europese ministers van Cultuur en Media sturen er in een brief bij de Europese Unie op aan dat de nakende vrijhandelsonderhandelingen met de Verenigde Staten de toekomst van het Europese audiovisuele beleid niet in gevaar brengen. Vlaamse ministers Ingrid Lieten (Media) en Joke Schauvliege (Cultuur) zijn mede-ondertekenaar. Hiermee zetten ze zich in voor het behoud van een sterk Europees audiovisueel beleid dat geleid heeft tot een bloeiende en diverse audiovisuele sector in de Europese Unie.

The Tribune Company is looking at potentially selling its newspapers, and one Indiegogo project from The Other 98% wants to “put the ‘free’ back in ‘free press’” by crowdfunding the money to purchase the media conglomerate. The price tag? Oh, you know, only $660 million. Today they are just over $60,000, with 30 days remaining in the campaign. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Opnieuw is een mediabedrijf het slachtoffer geworden van een hack. The Financial Times meldt op Twitter dat diverse blogs en accounts van sociale netwerken zijn gehackt. Volgens…

In het Friesch Dagblad aandacht voor de Leeuwarder Courant. Deze NDC-krant is volgens het Fries Dagblad erg ‘vaak negatief, tendentieus en vol vooringenomenheid’, als het…

NDC mediagroep heeft haar radiostations verkocht. RADIONL en Waterstad fm gaan over naar Beheer Regionale Radio, exploitant van TV Oranje, zo meldt NDC. Tot vorig jaar was TV Oranje mediapartner bij RADIONL. NDC mediagroep is

De provincie Noord-Brabant moet de Brabantse regionale kranten financieel te hulp schieten. Dat zegt Mieke Geeraedts, fractievoorzitter van de VVD in de Provinciale Staten van Brabant in het Brabants…

Adjunct-hoofdredacteur Willem Schouten is per direct weg bij Het Parool. Dat heeft hij gisteren besloten. Schouten meldt dat via Twitter. Hoofdredacteur Barbara van Beukering bevestigt…

I just saw some mind-bending work Chartbeat is about to release about measuring the time users spend exposed to an ad online.

As background, to quote Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile: “Chartbeat monitors activity by checking in with users every second and looking for signals (mouse movement, key strokes, etc) that show they are actively consuming the content in front of them. This means they can measure how long readers spend actively engaged on a page and what parts they’re reading. Because of this Chartbeat knows how long are actively reading while an ad is in view — both for an average user and the cumulative time of all users.” Chartbeat then did some internal research that found high correlation between engaged time exposed and a user’s ability to recall the advertiser’s brand and message. This has many implications:

* Measured this way, ads that appear down alongside the middle of a story turn out to be more valuable than the supposedly premium banners at the top of the page. That’s because people quickly scroll past those banners and all the big hair on the top of the page — logos, promos, and all that — to get to the substance of an article, where they spend time. So inventory that was undervalued becomes more valuable.

* Chartbeat suggests this means that quality content that engages people longer yields better ad performance. That, they say, would be a good thing for better content makers everywhere.

* Now web publishers can sell time like broadcasters — only this is assured exposure time. Advertisers like buying time. Will this make them more comfortable with buying on the web?

* I think this enables publishers to take on some risk for advertisers — guaranteeing them assured exposure time — thus increasing the value of what they sell.

* I wonder whether this spells trouble for the big-ass ads and takeovers we users try to escape as quickly as possible.

* I also wonder whether this spells trouble for the slideshows and other gimmicks that pump page views without increasing time spent exposed to an ad.

* I’d like to think this opens opportunities to find new value in ads next to videos and games and also — this could be important — mobile pages (though don’t think that mobile’s value will come from exposure to messaging; it will still come from knowing people and serving them relevance and value). The longer we spend on a page, the longer we see the ad, the more valuable the ad should be, right?

* I can only hope that this is another nail in the coffin of the dangerous, old-media-like metrics of unique users and pageviews. Engagement will matter more.

A sample report on an ad location:

Those who declare advertising dead are Mark-Twaining-it, I think. There are still many things to learn to find more effectiveness and value in advertising online. This is just one lesson. I say the real value of the net and mobile is in relationships: in learning more about people by delivering them more value so we can be trusted to deliver them greater relevance and value and, in turn, extract greater value from the interaction. More on that later….

Nog voor het half zes is, word ik wakker. Van het eerste licht dat door de blinden naar binnen kiert. Van vogelgeluiden in mijn achtertuin. Van een mond zo droog als oud leer. Ik spoel mijn gehemelte met een slok cola light die naast mijn hoofdeinde staat, sla het dekbed terug en sta op. Onderaan [...]

The Web and I haven't always had the best relationship.

When I was 9 or 10, my mom bought me a Smith Corona typewriter around the same time that other kids my age were starting to get computers. When I asked her why she didn't buy a computer, Mom laughed. Computers and the Web, she told me, were just a "passing phase." She grew up with typewriters and wasn't yet ready for a change.

I could see the excitement in her eyes when, shortly after she bought the typewriter, she handed me a book that she used as a young girl when learning how to type.

"Every good journalist," she would say, "should know how to type."

She'd open up to a page and, looking at her watch, would say, "1, 2, 3 ... go!" I'd type out all the lines on the page, trying to type as fast as I could while making as few mistakes as possible. The more I typed, the more I grew to like the clickety-clack sound of the keys and the closer I felt to Mom. I began to think that maybe she was right when she said I didn't need a computer.

I was especially convinced of this after my mom died of breast cancer when I was 11. In trying to hold on to her memory, I tried to hold on to her every belief and make them my own. Computers and the Web, I told myself, were just a passing phase.

Once I got to high school, I discovered AIM and slowly began to peek over the wall I had built between myself and the Web. But as excited as I was about the opportunity to virtually connect with friends, I still wasn't convinced of the Web's importance in journalism. As an aspiring journalist, I viewed it as a threat to the profession I had always wanted to pursue.

Saadia Ahmad/Providence College Mallary Tenore delivered a speech earlier this month at an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Cowl, Providence College's student newspaper. I mentioned this during a speech I gave last weekend at an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Cowl, my alma mater's student newspaper. I explained that the Web kept creeping into my life, especially when I started writing for The Cowl.

During my first week as a freshman reporter at Providence College, I learned that the editors had just launched the paper's website, thecowl.com. They hung promotional posters around campus, serving as a constant reminder that the new website had launched. Then, my first assignment was about -- you guessed it -- the Internet. My editor asked me to cover the Internet problems students were having due to a series of viruses.

There was no denying that the Internet would become something I'd both cover and use as a student reporter. But part of me still wanted to believe that the Web would never be an integral part of the future of journalism. I wrote an editorial for my hometown newspaper suggesting as much.

Newspapers, I wrote, are "the wave of the future." The need to tell stories, I went on to say, "is about as necessary as having a newspaper in hand while drinking your morning coffee." Reading the story now, I realize how attached I was to the way things were, to a past that I tried too hard to hold on to.

It wasn't until I became editor-in-chief of The Cowl that I started to let go. While I was editor, we began uploading the paper electronically -- a process that proved far more efficient than printing off each page of the paper for the printing company to pick up. As editor of the paper, I was also editor of the paper's website, which I tried to cultivate and grow. Still, the website was in many ways an afterthought, in part because students seemed to prefer the print product to the online product. As Poynter recently reported, this remains true at many college campuses.
 
During my speech I told current and former Cowl staffers that the popularity of the print campus newspaper in many ways reflects the "bubble" of college life. "In the journalism industry at large, the print product is suffering," I said. "This reality makes that little thing called change all the more important."

Being editor of The Cowl, I told the audience, gave me the confidence I needed to avoid getting trapped by antiquated conventions. It was this confidence that led me to move 1,400 miles away from home after graduating so I could pursue a career not in print, but on the Web at Poynter.

At Poynter, which celebrated its 35th anniversary this month, I have been free to explore and experiment with new online tools. I came upon Twitter, for instance, and decided to find out how it could be used as a tool for journalists. My reporting led to a September 2007 story with a telling lead sentence: "I never thought I'd become a twitterer who twittered tweets." Some readers at the time criticized me for suggesting that journalists should use a tool that had "no journalistic purpose." News organizations have since realized that by using social media, they can find story ideas, share content and reach new audiences in ways that they couldn't before.

Now as an online journalist covering the intersection of media and technology, I see the Web not as a threat, but as an opportunity. The Web has hurt the print product in some respects, but it has also paved the way for change and innovation.

A couple of editors recently shared promising thoughts about how the Web has shaped their view of print for the better. Financial Times Editor Lionel Barber, for instance, said this week that "newspapers still account for a large amount of revenue and rates are higher in print than online. You don't give up on the newspaper. But you have to adapt it to make it complementary with the Web."

As you adapt, you realize that changes can foster new connections and opportunities. If I were still typing away on my Smith Corona, I'd be missing out on so many of the things that connect me to both the past and the present.

The Internet, for instance, helps connect me to The Cowl and the students who write for it. While I couldn't pick up the 75th anniversary issue on campus when it first came out, I could look it up on the Web and feel like I was a part of those 75 years of history. And In writing personal essays about my mom on my blog, I've found a new way to keep her memory alive online.

As for that Smith Corona typewriter, it's in the attic of the house where I grew up, dusty but still there.